Home, tomorrow. By Ruhi Lee
The German word Fernweh is like a hammock for my bones. It loosely translates to, ‘farsickness’ or ‘homesickness for a place one has never been to.’ I am comforted when I stumble upon words that give expression to nameless feelings.
*
My father, too, may have found solace in knowing such a word existed, had he picked it up during his time in Germany. He was born in Bellary, India and spent his childhood moving between his mother’s village in Chitradurga and Hidkal Dam and Dharwad. As an adult he worked in countries across the Middle East and Europe, before migrating to Naarm (Melbourne). When asked, of all the places he’d spent his peripatetic life, which one he felt most at home in, he didn’t have an answer for me.
* Before COVID-19 changed everything, I had plans to visit my “homeland” in India. Exciting though it was, I was secretly relieved at having to cancel. A part of me was reluctant to return to a place where I’d once again embody statistics that made me feel weak and brought to remembrance the mouldy corners of my past.
In India, a child is sexually abused every 15 minutes and in 50% of those cases, the perpetrator is a known and trusted adult.¹²
In India, a woman is raped every 20 minutes.³
Indian women constitute almost 40% of all suicides around the world.⁴ No, instead I preferred to stay “at home” in Australia where I was blissfully unaware that:
The Indigenous suicide rate is about double that of the non-Indigenous population.⁵
Suicide is the leading cause of death for Indigenous children aged between five and seventeen.⁶
First nations people are more likely to be incarcerated, to earn less and to die earlier.⁷
*
Lisa Bellear, Goernpil woman of the Noonuccal people of Minjerribah wrote in her poem, Tears of hope, a wounded soul can heal, if tears are possible… If [mother earth] can find just one tear we know there can be a tomorrow.
* Mother nature cries tears of joy while her oppressors are in lockdown. If I’d ended up going to India, I’d have witnessed clear waters flowing through the perennially polluted Ganga nadhi and breathed clean, fresh air in Delhi and Punjab, where people could see the Himalayan mountains for the first time in thirty years. Such a sight would have made me cry too.
*
Throwing up commonly causes the eyes to water. I remember my father rubbing my back anytime I fell sick as a child, offering words of consolation, ‘It’s better that it all comes out of your system.’
The entire world is vomiting right now. Racism, gender inequality, intolerance, corruption, injustice - it’s better that it all comes out of our systems.
People are homesick for a place they have never been.
* My father rarely cries. His trauma is bottled up. I don’t think he’s ever found a refuge that he felt was strong enough to hold him while he breaks open to let his maladies out. I hope with all my heart that one day, he will.
* Home can be a receptacle for one’s belongings. Home can be the feeling of proximity to loved ones. Home can be a collection of sounds, like the ringing of outdoor chimes, the barking of a dog and the buzz of the kitchen exhaust. You can feel at home in a word. Like Fernweh. Home may be a physical location that holds the promise of safety in the face of one’s injured past.
I have come to understand home mostly as a place of healing. We are nomads because home is changing every day as protestors, poets and ordinary people everywhere seek to make the world better for others. My home is not fixed. It orbits the sun and floats along an invisible river of tears which I’ve heard are the waters of healing.
¹ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-42193533 ² https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/node/4978/pdf/4978.pdf ³ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-crime-women/one-woman-reports-a-rape-every-15-minutes-in-indiaidUSKBN1Z821W ⁴ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(18)30138-5/fulltext ⁵https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/3303.0~2015~Main%20Features~Intentional%2 0self-harm%20in%20Aboriginal%20and%20Torres%20Strait%20Islander%20people~9 ⁶ https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2019/09/26/suicide-rate-indigenous-australians-remainsdistressingly-high ⁷ https://australianstogether.org.au/discover/the-wound/indigenous-disadvantage-inaustralia/#Disadvantagereference8